Link to ABC News/Washington Post poll:
http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1050a3SocialIssues.pdf

From "POLL: Support for Civil Unions Rises, Yet Sharp Divisions Remain," ABC News, November 8, 2007:

A record number of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll support civil unions for gay couples...

Overall, 55 percent favor allowing homosexual couples to form legally recognized civil unions, giving them the same rights as married couples in areas such as health insurance, inheritance and pension coverage. That's up from 45 percent in an ABC/Post poll in 2006; the previous high was 51 percent in 2004...

Conservative Republicans and evangelical white Protestants oppose civil unions by more than 2-1, and Republicans overall oppose them by 58-39 percent...

[Support for civil unions] peaks among adults under age 30, and tanks among seniors. It's highest in the East and West, notably lower in the Midwest and South. Whites overall are more apt than blacks to support gay civil unions, and the idea wins more support among women (59 percent) than men (51 percent, and 47 percent among married men)...

BALTIMORE, Md. (The Catholic Review) - Asserting that traditional marriage is “radically threatened” by some courts and legislatures intent on legalizing same-sex marriage, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien called the defense of marriage “an urgent necessity to ensure the flourishing of persons, the well-being of children and the common good of society.”...

[In his homily text at the Oct. 25 Red Mass for judges and legal professionals, the] archbishop acknowledged that “formidable forces” are pushing to alter the traditional understanding of marriage, but he urged lawmakers and members of the justice system to resist altering current law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman...

“True, the institution of marriage is regulated by civil law and church law, but it preceded them both,” he said. “It originated from neither, but from God. Therefore, neither church nor state can alter its basic meaning and structure.”...

LANSING -- In a case testing the limits of Michigan's marriage amendment, the state Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over whether the measure prohibits public agencies and schools from extending health care benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees...

The constitutional amendment -- approved by voters 59%-41% in 2004 -- defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and prohibits government recognition of same-sex marriages "for any purpose."

[In a decision issued earlier this year] the Michigan Court of Appeals...[reversed] a trial court ruling which had found that government-provided benefits did not constitute legal recognition of a marriage-like relationship...

Advocates on both sides said Tuesday a decision from the Supreme Court is needed to provide clarity about what the amendment requires of public agencies. Private employers are not affected. The Supreme Court is expected to rule by early next year.

"THOMPSON: The governor of Massachusetts apparently has spent 20 million dollars of his own personal fortune, and apparently a good chunk of that in South Carolina. All I got to say is, governor, you can't buy South Carolina. You can't even rent South Carolina.

(END VIDEOTAPE)"

On questions relating to the Bible's treatment of family and morals, one might expect assurance, if not rigidity, from Evangelical Christianity. So, it may surprise many to learn how "live" the topic of divorce remains in Evangelical circles. Last month, the cover story of the monthly Christianity Today was titled "When to Separate What God has Joined: A Closer Reading on the Bible on Divorce" [see below]. The heated controversy provoked by the story showed how Biblically flexible some Evangelicals can be — especially when God's word seems at odds not just with modern American behavior, but also with simple human kindness...

...[In the New Testament] Jesus appears to say that divorce is allowed only if adultery has occurred...

But does the literal text mean what we think it does?...While doing doctoral studies at Cambridge, I likely read every surviving writing of the rabbis of Jesus' time. I "got inside their heads" enough to begin to understand them...[And when I re-read] the biblical texts on divorce...[t]hey now said something I hadn't heard before I read the rabbis!...

[W]hile divorce should never happen, God allows it (and subsequent remarriage) when your partner breaks the marriage vows...

Mary Ann Glendon, a prominent legal scholar and a papal adviser poised to become the next US ambassador to the Vatican, is known for staunchly defending Catholic doctrine while striking a conciliatory tone with opponents, colleagues said yesterday.

Supporters said Glendon would bring a measured sensibility to a politically sensitive position, but opponents criticized her as a social conservative in lockstep with the Vatican's opposition to contraception and gay marriage. In recent years, Glendon has been a leading legal specialist on same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and was tapped this summer to lead an advisory group on judicial matters for presidential candidate Mitt Romney...

Glendon, 69, also an opponent of abortion rights, is considered an authority on family law and social policy, bioethics, and international human rights. In 2004, she became the highest-ranking female adviser in the church when Pope John Paul II chose her to lead the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a powerful panel that helps the church establish social policy...

Link to Garden State Equality’s commercial “Busy Family”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ4hg3FqmCY

Link to Blue Jersey’s commercial “Think Equal”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ise-NLtw1jI

From "Pro-gay marriage TV commercials hit air in New Jersey," Associated Press, November 6, 2007:

Two liberal New Jersey groups are debuting pro-gay-marriage television commercials tonight.

Garden State Equality and Blue Jersey are running the spots on News 12 New Jersey.

The ads will run for two weeks -- longer if the groups can raise money to keep them on the air...

Charlie Bakst has written yet another column [in the Providence Journal] in favor of gay marriage...

Charlie says he doesn’t know where the fear of gay marriage comes from...

The first problem is that the concept of gay marriage or even civil unions implies the legalization of and public support of immoral sexual activity...Sometimes people opposed to government interference in personal matters say that we should keep the state out of the bedroom. I want to say to those who lobby for gay marriage, please, please, keep your bedroom out of my State...

Second, if the State approves gay marriage or civil unions, it’s only a matter of time until the Church will be required to witness such unions...

And finally, if gay activists continue to push their agenda in Rhode Island, like Massachusetts we’ll inevitably be drawn into a long-lasting, angry, and divisive debate...

In short, the push for gay marriage isn’t nearly as simple or benign as some would have it. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned – if not fearful...

Bishop Tobin [in his column "Why You Should Worry About 'Gay Marriage'"] writes that gay marriage implies public support of “immoral sexual activity.” ...

I don’t consider this activity immoral...To deny gays a right to wed is to treat them as second-class citizens. That’s immoral.

The bishop says that if the state approves gay weddings, the church in time will be required to witness them...

I can’t believe it would come to this regarding nuptials...I find it hard to envision...gay couples...listening to [a pastor]...explain why the church believes same-sex weddings violate God’s design and then...insisting, “Marry us anyway.”

The bishop asserts, “If gay activists continue to push their agenda in Rhode Island, like Massachusetts we’ll inevitably be drawn into a long-lasting, angry and divisive debate..."

Maybe. Yet I’m struck by how civil the debate was in Massachusetts and by how much it now has died down...

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

BOSTON, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- The Boston-based legal advocacy group that led the fight for gay marriage in Massachusetts is pushing to expand same-sex couples' rights.

Carissa Cunningham, a spokeswoman for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, said the group is now setting its sights on the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, the Boston Globe reported Monday...

Cunningham said GLAD has not yet decided whether to file a lawsuit or lobby Congress to repeal the act, but is currently seeking to attack provisions of the law that deny federal recognition of wedded same-sex couples...

...For 10 years I had wanted to start a family, but with a real live man, not a vial of sperm. For the biological and emotional closeness it could provide to my children, because of the love I felt for my own father, I wanted my children to have a father who would be part of their lives...

And so we began our odd seduction, a courtship that was not about sexuality or marriage but nevertheless involved many of the same concerns: compatibility, attraction, trust, commitment...

I knew he was taking sexual risks, and I wanted to scream, “Don’t jeopardize our chance at children, and your life, for casual sex!” But I wasn’t his boyfriend, or wife or even a longtime friend. And I feared that if I pried into his love life or pushed him to be safe, he might feel forced into an ultimatum that I might lose...

[Finally] I couldn’t take it anymore, the overwhelming fear that AIDS could devastate our lives and the lives of the children we might have together...

[Now] I have my three children, who were created with sperm from the same anonymous donor. In five years, when [my oldest daughter] is 18, she can contact him if she chooses. Meeting her donor may be better than never knowing him, but it won’t be the same as having a real, present father throughout her childhood...

When Alima Traore [who is 28, lives in Maryland and works as a cashier] was a young girl in Mali, parts of her genitalia were cut off, which is the custom there...

In September, the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected Ms. Traore’s plea for asylum and ordered her sent back to Mali. It ruled that she did not face persecution there, because the cutting, while “reprehensible,” could not be repeated...

Nor did it matter that Ms. Traore’s father has said he will force her to marry a first cousin — his sister’s son...

“It is understandable,” [an immigration board member] wrote, that Ms. Traore, “an educated young woman, would prefer to choose her own spouse rather than acquiesce to pressure from her family to marry someone she does not love and with whom she expects to be unhappy. The respondent has also expressed valid concerns about possible birth defects resulting from a union with her first cousin.”

“While we do not discount the respondent’s concerns,” [he] continued, “we do not see how the reluctant acceptance of family tradition over personal preference can form the basis” for allowing Ms. Traore to stay in the United States.

Karen Musalo, the director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law, said that reasoning was the product of a judicial system dominated by men.

“Are women’s rights human rights?” Professor Musalo asked. “Isn’t it a human right not to be forced into a marriage?”...

"TIM RUSSERT: And also with gay marriage, according to the Associated Press, Thompson favors a constitutional amendment that bars judges from legalizing gay marriage, but also leaves open the door for state legislature to approve the practice. So, if a state said we want to have gay marriages in our state, you would be okay with that?

FRED THOMPSON: Yes. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Nobody ever thought that was contested until recently. We've had a couple of judges in a couple of states decide to turn all that on its head, so we've had, again, a judge created problem. I would support a constitutional amendment that addresses this judge created problem and say judges can't do that. But at the end of day, if a state legislature and a Governor decide that that's what they want to do, yes, they should have the freedom to do what Fred Thompson thinks is a very bad idea."

". . .I want to quickly sketch for you the picture of an anonymous culture. But everything I'm about to tell you comes from the factual record.

This society is advanced in the sciences and the arts. It has a complex economy and a strong military. It includes many different religions, although religion tends to be a private affair or a matter of civic ceremony.

This particular society also has big problems. Among them is that fertility rates remain below replacement levels. There aren't enough children being born to replenish the current adult population and to do the work needed to keep society going. The government offers incentives to encourage people to have more babies. But nothing seems to work.

Promiscuity is common and accepted. So are bisexuality and homosexuality. So is prostitution. Birth control and abortion are legal, widely practiced, and justified by society's leading intellectuals.

Every now and then, a lawmaker introduces a measure to promote marriage, arguing that the health and future of society depend on stable families. These measures typically go nowhere.

Ok. What society am I talking about? Our own country, of course, would broadly fit this description. But I'm not talking about us.

I've just outlined the conditions of the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ. We tend to idealize the ancients, to look back at Greece and Rome as an age of extraordinary achievements. And of course, it was. But it had another side as well.

We don't usually think of Plato and Aristotle endorsing abortion or infanticide as state policy. But they did. Hippocrates, the great medical pioneer, also famously created an abortion kit that included sharp blades for cutting up the fetus and a hook for ripping it from the womb. We rarely connect that with his Hippocratic Oath. But some years ago, archeologists discovered the remains of what appeared to be a Roman-era abortion or infanticide "clinic." It was a sewer filled with the bones of more than 100 infants.

If you haven't done so already, I'd encourage you to pick up a little book written about 10 years ago, "The Rise of Christianity" by the Baylor University scholar Rodney Stark. You'll find all of this history in its pages and more.

But what does ancient Rome have to do with my topic tonight, the relationship of Church and state today?

Let me explain it this way: People often say we're living at a "post-Christian" moment. That's supposed to describe the fact that Western nations have abandoned or greatly downplayed their Christian heritage in recent decades. But our "post-Christian" moment actually looks a lot like the pre-Christian moment. The signs of our times in the developed nations -- morally, intellectually, spiritually and even demographically -- are uncomfortably similar to the signs in the world at the time of the Incarnation. . .

I'm not a historian or a sociologist, so I'll leave it to others to fully evaluate Rodney Stark's work. But Stark does address a couple of key questions: How did Christianity succeed? How was it able to accomplish so much so fast? . . .

Stark concludes that Christian success flowed from two things: first, Christian doctrine, and second, people being faithful to that doctrine. Stark writes: "An essential factor in the [Christian] religion's success was what Christians believed. ... And it was the way those doctrines took on actual flesh, the way they directed organizational actions and individual behavior, that led to the rise of Christianity."

Let's put it in less academic terms: The Church, through the Apostles and their successors, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People believed in the Gospel. But they weren't just agreeing to a set of ideas. Believing in the Gospel meant changing their whole way of thinking and living. It was a radical transformation. So radical they couldn't go on living like the people around them anymore.

Stark shows that one of the key areas in which Christians rejected the culture around them was marriage and the family. From the start, to be a Christian meant believing that sex and marriage were sacred. From the start, to be a Christian meant rejecting abortion, infanticide, birth control, divorce, homosexual activity and marital infidelity -- all those things widely practiced by their Roman neighbors.

Athenagoras, a Christian layman, told the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the year A.D. 176 that abortion was "murder" and that those involved would have to "give an account to God." And he told the emperor the reason why: "For we regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care."

As this audience already knows, Christian reverence for the unborn child is no medieval development. It comes from the very beginnings of our faith. The early Church had no debates over politicians and communion. There wasn't any need. No persons who tolerated or promoted abortion would have dared to approach the Eucharistic table, let alone dared to call themselves true Christians.

And here's why: The early Christians understood that they were the offspring of a new worldwide family of God. They saw the culture around them as a culture of death, a society that was slowly extinguishing itself. In fact, when you read early Christian literature, practices like adultery and abortion are often described as part of "the way of death" or the "way of the [devil]."

. . .Pluralism in a democracy doesn't mean shutting up about inconvenient issues. It means speaking up -- respectfully, in a spirit of justice and charity, but also vigorously and without apologies.

If pagan Rome could be won for Jesus Christ, surely we can do the same in our own world. What it takes is the zeal and courage to live what we claim to believe. All of us here tonight already have that desire in our hearts. So let's pray for each other, and encourage each other, and get down to the Lord's work."